Triggers
by anxiousgeek
Summary: After New York Pepper is suffering from anxiety too. A Pepper POV of Flutter.


She's always asleep when he comes home.

It's easier that way, to be asleep, fast asleep and to be woken by him reverently when he comes in; kissing her cheek and sliding into the bed beside her as if he had been up working late and not half way across the world in danger.

Before they moved to New York, before the battle of New York, she often stayed awake and waited for him to come home. Sat curled up on the sofa in his workshop and watched television, or worked on reports or just sat and watched the space he would land on until he came home, safe and mostly in one piece.

New York changed everything.

She couldn't just sit there knowing he could be dying and dead at any time, anywhere and she wouldn't know. Couldn't know. Nothing could distract her. Not entertainment, not work.

Not alcohol.

She tried a couple of times, drank enough wine to make herself sick but she never slept, never fell to sleep or even just unconscious. She just stayed awake and sobered up and by time Tony returned she was as strung out and broken as he was and that wasn't what he needed from her. Wasn't what she needed either. She needed to be the strong one, at least for those few hours when he came home, then she could sleep and by morning feel better, feel alive again.

Feel whole again.

The panic always started when he got the call, that very first call on his phone, or the message from Jarvis – the AI using his very serious voice – she felt the panic start, low in her chest and very slight. Just a flutter of panic to let her know what was coming. What could happen. A reminder of the danger at her very core. The danger to both of them. His life and her heart.

It bloomed when he flew away, hit her full force until she couldn't sit still, couldn't stop moving. Her breathing was harsh and fast, and she rocked back and forth, sometimes even kicking out at whatever was close. The wall, the door, the sofa, always ordering Jarvis to keep quiet, keep this to himself. Keep this from Tony. He didn't need to know how hard it was for her to see him fly away with a whole chest and a whole heart with the possibility he would come back in pieces.

She rocked back and forth and kicked and swore and screamed her head off in his workshop and tried to get her breathing under control and panting breaths and the sheer panic from tearing her in two. She would fall to pieces and then put herself back together again but she couldn't sleep. She couldn't relax or settle without it starting all over again, rocking back and forth in the bed – their bed – kicking out and crying and Jarvis was asking her if she needed someone.

Other than Tony.

So she turned to sleeping pills, trying everything she could get without a prescription before she turned to a doctor to get something that helped, that really knocked her out. And something to help with the violent panic she felt when she he first left so that when he was gone, when he left during the day she could actually do some work. Or at least something that wasn't screaming or trying to breathe. She was considering some counselling too, unlike Tony who shied away from anything doctors offered him that wasn't a narcotic. She wasn't sure she had time though.

So she slept. She worked and slept until he was safe again.

She was scared that one day she would work and sleep and he wouldn't come home. _One day he wouldn't come home. _It burned inside her, hot and violent, like Extremis all over again but it stable now even if she wasn't. She couldn't quite remember how Tony had wormed her way into her heart like this, it was so long ago now, so deep and unrelenting. No wonder it caused her so much pain to think she might lose him.

He left for a mission, Pepper had a panic attack, calmed down a little and it was around eight pm when she realised she'd run out of her sleeping pills. Not too late to get another prescription for someone with her resources, but she hated bothering people – this late, on the weekend. As the evening wore on though she felt it starting again, pounding in her chest hard and erratic, and she had to move. Couldn't just stand or sit or sleep. She needed to move.

She paced the tower. Wandered around the some of the empty floors, the floors Tony had set aside for various future projects, floors he was using for storage. The labs he and Bruce used, the floors they all worked out on, floors the Avengers lived in, the floor that seemed to have become a communal area. Floors she and Tony shared that were just theirs and no one else used or even stepped inside of sometimes. Tread through every corridor, poked her head in every door to see what had changed, see what she could access and she had no idea what time it was.

The skyline was beautiful, from every angle, bright and enticing, but giving her no indication as to how long she'd been walking around for. She was tired, but she didn't...didn't think she could sleep. She wandered back into Tony's main workshop, walking around, running her fingers over different bits of equipment.

She wandered aimlessly for the longest time, listening to the hum of the equipment; feeling it settle in her bloodstream, in her bones. It helped.

After a little while she heard the rush of the suit, far above her and almost undetectable but there anyway, on the edge of her eardrums. She started to leave the workshop, climbing up the stairs instead of taking the elevator only a couple of floors away when she heard Jarvis speak again.

"Miss Potts, Mr Stark needs your urgent attention."

"Has he been injured?" Pepper asked, starting to run up the stairs, using her long legs to go up two at a time to reach him faster.

"No Miss Potts," Jarvis said, a hitch in his cool voice, "he is having an anxiety attack."

She didn't pause when he said it, just climbed faster pushing into their penthouse and listening for the familiar harsh and horrifying breathing she knew too well. She dropped to her knees when she reached him, wrapping an arm around his shaking frame.

"Tony," she cried, able to stop her own panic from completely taking over, but hearing it in her voice regardless. "Tony, I'm here, you're home."

He didn't reply, didn't breathe, just shook slightly.

"Tony, Tony, Tony."

He rolled on his side then, eyes open but wide and unfocused as she wrapped herself around him, curled around his larger frame and rocked them back and forth slowly. He watched her as she kissed him on the lips, his forehead, his cheeks, whatever she could reach, over and over and over until he looked more alive, more with it. With her. His breathing was quick, but steady, his skin cold and clammy, smelling of sweat and metal and she kept moving, kept talking.

"I'm here Tony. I love you. I'm here."

"Do you require a doctor, Miss Potts?"

"No," she said. No doctor could help now, just her. Them. Just them. "Tony, Tony, can you get up?" she asked.

He moved then, with her help; sitting up and kissing her. The roughness of the kiss was unexpected, even if the desperation wasn't and she kissed back for a moment, letting him feel her, alive and well and with her.

"You weren't in bed," he said, but she ignored him for now, getting him up on his feet and into their bedroom.

Once he was sitting on the bed, she could start to take care of him properly, do something to get him out of this mindset, away from this panic and whatever had triggered it. She undressed him slipped his clothes from his skin so she could slide her fingers over the warmth building. She pressed a hand against his chest, feeling the new scars there, feeling his rapid heartbeat so strong and fast and _alive_ within him. Then she had an idea, to bring him back to the present, palming him through his boxers to see what reaction she got.

She wasn't sure it was a great idea, but pulled his boxers off anyway, and bent her head down, taking him in her mouth and feeling him harden slowly despite the panic racking his body. It was slow going at first, it was too much, she could feel the tension in his body; the wrong tension and then, then it was different. Then he was hard and deep and she was choking a little and he was groaning quietly not even aware of the noises he made, shuddering a little as she moved her mouth, used her hands. She thought she heard him say something, his voice strained when she heard her name certainly and then he was coming and she swallowed not wanting to break the moment, not wanting to let go of the moment.

Let go of Tony.

He fell back against the bed and she pulled back, looking up at him breathing hard on the bed, eyes squeezed shut, skin alive and flushed. Pepper felt better. He felt better so Pepper felt better and she stood, stripping her pyjamas and putting them in the laundry, turning the lights off before climbing into bed, telling Tony to join her. When he did, she pulled the quilt over them.

"You weren't here," he said again.

"I couldn't sleep," she told him again, watching his face in the darkness

"You're always asleep," he said, "you're always asleep and here."

She pulled him to her and kissed him. She wasn't where he could find her, wasn't where she usually was. That was the trigger. She was the trigger.

"I didn't realise Tony, I didn't know," she whispered feeling her own panic slightly, low in her chest again.

"You're always asleep."

"I always have sleeping pills," she admitted. "I ran out and didn't have time to get more."

He pulled away from her them, from her light kisses and strong hold.

"You're taking sleeping pills!?"

"Only when you go on missions," she said, closing her eyes and burying her face in his chest, "only when you're gone longer than a day."

"Why?" he asked and she sighed into his skin, unsure what to say for a moment.

"I never sleep when you're gone, not without help," she said, looking up at him. "I worry too much."

"Oh."

She kissed him on the lips and settled on his shoulder, relaxed.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"Not now," he said. "Not now."

She smiled, of course he didn't but then, neither did Pepper because for now he was here and he was alive.

Eventually he would be gone.


End file.
